


Talking with You in the Dark

by betts



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Body Worship, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Kid Fic, Mutual Masturbation, Neighbors, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, Skinny Dipping, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-31 12:11:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Across-the-hall neighbors Bellamy and Clarke barely know each other, but both suffer from loneliness — Clarke, recently divorced; Bellamy, growing distant from his sister. So Clarke offers a simple solution: to share a bed, and talk to each other at night.Winner of the 2018 Bellarke Fan Work Award for Best Modern One-Shot





	Talking with You in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Our Souls at Night by one of my favorite authors, Kent Haruf. It's also a Netflix movie which I also recommend.
> 
> This started as kind of a prose experiment that I think I may have failed, but it was at least a fun failure.

 

* * *

 

_I do love this physical world. I love this physical life with you. And the air and the country. The backyard, the gravel in the back alley. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed talking with you in the dark._

— Kent Haruf, _Our Souls at Night_

 

* * *

 

 

_Moodboard by[jasperjoordan](http://jasperjoordan.tumblr.com/post/182220936390/aesthetic-for-talking-with-you-in-the-dark-by)_

 

* * *

 

He settles in for the night — football game on his nineteen inch, PBR in hand and feet propped on a beat-up ottoman he found in an alley, window unit kicked on full blast but this dump is still too damn hot — when someone knocks on his door. He sets his beer down and gets up and looks through the peephole.

He flips back the deadbolt and opens the door. Clarke smiles at him. Madi isn’t with her. She’s wearing a set of scrubs with rainbow balloons on them, badge dangling from her front pocket. Clunky watch on her wrist. A big leather purse slung over one shoulder.

“Hi,” she says. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.” He takes a step back and lets her in. She’s never been inside — his apartment is sparse, bare essentials. He gestures to the shitty suede couch he got on Craigslist for twenty bucks and she takes a seat. He picks up the remote and mutes the TV.

“Want a beer or anything?” he asks.

“No, thanks.”

He leans against the threshold, arms across his chest. “So. What’s up?”

“I have...a proposition for you.” She wrings her hands between her knees, glances around for a moment before settling back on him. The tips of her cheeks are flush pink, probably from climbing three flights of steps in their un-air-conditioned stairwell. “We’ve been neighbors almost a year now, and we don’t actually know each other that well. Like, I only know a few things about you. I know you spend a lot of time alone. I know you have a sister because I see her come and go. I thought she was your girlfriend at first but then Mrs. Greenfield downstairs told me otherwise. That's about it.”

“You talk to Mrs. Greenfield about me?”

Her face gets redder. “Just the once. Anyway, I think — no, I know — you’re lonely. And I’m lonely, too, on the days I don’t have Madi.”

He shifts from his left foot to his right, slides his hands in his pockets.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Clarke says to the corner of the room. “It made so much sense when I was going over it in my head, and now that I’m saying it aloud it sounds ridiculous.”

“It’s fine. Go ahead.”

Clarke takes a steadying breath. “What I’m saying is, I think we should sleep together.” When he doesn’t respond — he can’t, it’s too far out of left field, nothing could have prepared him for this conversation — she continues: “Not — not sex. I don’t mean that. Just lying in bed together. Talking until we fall asleep. Waking up next to each other. Not being so lonely anymore.”

“I don’t know, Clarke.”

She stands from the couch and shoulders her purse. “It’s fine. It was a stupid idea.”

“No, just — can I think about it?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay. I’ll come by later.”

She smiles the same sweet, shy smile she’s given him every time they’ve passed in the hallway for the past year. “I’d like that.”

 

* * *

 

He paces back and forth across his living room, goes to his Favorites on his phone: only _O_ and _Miller,_ hesitates for just a second before hitting O’s name. It rings four times and goes to voicemail, her weird looking-for-a-job, grown-up voice that doesn’t sound like her at all — “You’ve reached the voicemail of Octavia Blake. Please leave a message and I’ll return your call at my earliest convenience. Thanks!”

“I’ve got a stupid problem,” he says. “Call me back,” and hangs up.

He makes one lap around his living room before opening a text: _Where are you??_

When the ellipses don’t immediately rise, he nearly chucks the phone across the room. He could call Miller, but he would just laugh about it, not take it seriously. Think Clarke is a creep or something. It’s not like Bellamy can explain it, the earnestness of the suggestion, the accuracy of her judgment. In a time of crisis, the fact he only has his sister to go to and one friend is indication enough of his aloneness.

He scrolls up in his texts with O. She hasn’t texted him in a week. They haven’t talked on the phone in a month. He hasn’t seen her in — longer than that, since she moved to Springfield, over an hour away. She doesn’t answer his calls anymore, takes forever to respond to his texts. He sends her memes and she only hearts the message. She cancels on him when they make plans more often than she doesn’t. Nearly the same with Miller, whom he only hangs out with maybe every other month, more during football season, and even then, it’s not like they have a particularly deep connection. They drink and eat pizza and watch the game. They don’t even hug each other hello or goodbye.

He doesn’t remember the last time he touched another non-related person intentionally, affectionately. The last time he conversed with someone on any meaningful level. The last time someone pierced the veil of everyday platitudes. Echo, maybe, but they’ve been broken up six years. Twice as long as they’d been together.

He scrolls through his text history: Octavia, last week; Miller, two weeks ago; password reset for his credit card, two weeks ago; Echo, three months ago. And that’s it.

 _Busy get back to u after bit,_ Octavia replies, followed by a kiss emoji.

He considers replying, typing it all out, but doesn’t. No use explaining; she won’t respond anyway.

 

* * *

 

He knocks on her door, 3B, across the hall. It’s nearing midnight but he knows she’s still awake. She works seconds. Ten hour shift, four days a week. On her days off, she has her daughter Madi, who hasn’t yet started kindergarten.

He shifts the six-pack in his grip while he waits.

Finally she opens the door. She looks surprised to see him. She’s wearing a tank top now. Yoga pants. Hair tied up in a crooked ponytail. The theme music from _Law & Order: SVU _ comes from the TV. Her apartment smells like Indian food.

“Hey,” he says, and hands her the six pack.

She takes it, smiles at him again in that way he likes so much. “Hey. Come in.”

He takes a seat on her couch and she fiddles around in the kitchen and comes back and hands him one of his beers, cap off. She sits on the loveseat adjacent to him, her own beer in hand and her foot tucked under her. She flips off the TV.

“Didn’t take long,” she says like a question, sounding hopeful.

Paintings are hung on the walls, dozens of them. Portraits and landscapes and abstractions. A big picture frame of Madi reads “FAMILY _is_ _life’s greatest blessing.”_ She installed track lights instead of the garish overhead light bulbs of his apartment. She has newer appliances. The window unit blows out actual cold air. She has one of the few apartments with a balcony. He’s only been over here a few times, when she had to get the laundry from downstairs and asked him to keep an eye on Madi for just a few minutes. On those occasions, he sat here, in this exact spot, and watched Madi color at the coffee table. One time, maybe a year ago now, she gave him the drawing she was working on, a series of blue circles with some yellow lines. She spelled her name in purple. It’s hanging on his fridge.

“I guess we can try it,” he says as he rolls the beer bottle between his palms. “Just seems weird.”

“Why?”

“We barely know each other.”

“We can get to know each other.”

He picks at the label. “Don’t know why you’d want to.”

“That’s ridiculous. Here, I’ll start. Ask me a question. Anything.”

He stares at his feet. Even her carpet is newer than his, softer, less stained. “Hot outside, isn’t it?”

“Bellamy Blake, we are not going to talk about the weather.”

“Why not?”

“It’s boring.”

“You didn’t tell me I had to be interesting.”

“I’m telling you now. Think of something better.”

“I don’t know. When does Madi start school?”

“This coming September.”

“Somewhere near here, or wherever her dad lives?”

“Mom, actually. Her other mom. Lexa.”

“So you two…”

“It’s complicated.”

“You said I could ask you anything.”

She smiles in a teasing way. “Didn’t say I’d answer. What else? What’s really on your mind?”

He blurts it out before he can think better of it: “Why me? There are other people you could have asked.”

She lifts one bare shoulder in a shrug. “Madi likes you, and she’s a good judge of character.”

“She’s five.”

“Yeah, well, she cries around bad people. She’s never cried around you. That makes you good people. And you’re nearby.”

“So is Murphy.” Murphy is in 2C.

“If you think I’d give that man an opportunity to stab me in my sleep, you are wrong.”

“Who says I wouldn’t?”

“I’d like to think you’d be a little more artistic with your murder choices.”

“Arsenic, maybe.”

“See? I only want to sleep with men who would kill me in a classy way.” She lifts her bottle in cheers and takes a drink. He watches her mouth curl around the lip.

“So. When do we start?” he asks.

“I was thinking tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“I’m tired. You’re here. Why not?”

He nods, a nervous thrum under his skin that isn’t at all unpleasant. “Okay. Tonight.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke’s bedroom seems smaller than his but only because her bed is enormous. Must be king-sized. It’s made neatly, one of those expensive floral bedspreads you see at people’s grandma’s houses or in commercials for mattresses. They have to toss about a hundred throw pillows on the floor before they can turn down the covers. Bellamy normally sleeps in his boxers but he put on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt so the situation would feel less weird. It's like having a co-ed slumber party, sort of.

He crawls in bed beside her. She flips off her bedside lamp. The only light now is from the stove hood, which she keeps on as a nightlight, a slat of yellow drifting into the open door of the bedroom. The ceiling fan circulates what little cool air there is. Neither of them bother pulling up the heavy comforter; only a sheet covers them. Bellamy stares at the ceiling.

“Your turn,” Clarke whispers, even though no one can hear them. She turns onto her side so she’s looking at him, her head propped on her palm. The bed is so big she might as well be across the room.

“For what?”

“I get to ask you a question.”

“Okay.”

She’s silent as she thinks of one. “We’ll go chronological. What’s your earliest memory?”

“Not, like, the basics? What I do for a living?”

“We’ll get to that next time.”

He risks a glance at her. “Presumptuous.”

“Confident.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he trains his eyes back to the ceiling. “It’s not a concrete memory. Just — shapes. A feeling. I think I was in a car seat. And someone had left me on a porch, maybe, and all I could see was a light above me and a bunch of stars and moths. It was hot outside. I remember being scared because I was alone and strapped down to something. Absolutely terrified, which is why I think I remember it. And then my mom came out and got me and brought me in. It was like, the biggest deal, but thinking back, I’m guessing she was just bringing in groceries or whatever, and didn’t have enough hands.”

“Sounds like you were an infant.”

“Had to be, yeah.”

“They say the earlier you develop memories, the more intelligent you are.”

He snorts a laugh. “Sure.”

“You know I’ve always thought you were in the CIA or FBI or something, and that’s why you’re so quiet and have such weird hours. Like, a spy.”

“Who would I be spying on?”

“Murphy, who is a wanted criminal, and you’re undercover waiting for him to do some kind of crime so you can bring him down.”

“Do you want to know what I actually do for a living?”

“Not yet. I want to keep the illusion for another twenty-four hours.”

“Even if I were undercover, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

“That's okay, I'll know the truth in my heart.”

“Any other questions?”

“Not tonight. I think it’s time for sleep.” She rolls to her other side. “Goodnight, Agent Blake.”

 

* * *

 

He wakes up before her. The sun has only just risen. The clock by her head reads six-thirty. She rolled closer to him in the night, but still far enough she’s nearly at arm’s distance. He slept well — better than he does in his own bed. He’s always getting up to get water or pee or sometimes has to move completely to the couch, close to the window unit, to get comfortable in the heat.

Strands of hair have fallen over her face. He reaches out and brushes them aside, tucks them behind her ear. Her eyebrows wrinkle and she rubs her nose, but doesn’t wake up. He should get out of bed, he thinks, go back to his place. Make a cup of coffee. Put on some clothes and hit the gym. But he doesn’t have work today, doesn’t have to wake up yet.

So he closes his eyes and falls back asleep.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up a second time, it’s nearly ten in the morning. He opens his eyes and Clarke is gone, but he can smell bacon. The sheet has been pulled over him, not kicked to the end of the mattress like it had been earlier. She must have covered him.

He gets out of bed and ambles into the kitchen. Clarke is humming a song, dressed in a little floral sundress, hair pulled back. He takes a seat at the kitchen counter.

She glances back at him as she scrapes scrambled eggs across two plates from a pan. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he says.

“Do you want coffee?”

“Please. Black is fine.”

She passes him a plate of scrambled eggs and toast and bacon, reaches up to a cabinet and pulls down a mug and fills it.

“Wasn’t expecting you to be here this morning,” she says.

“Why not?”

“You don’t seem like the kind of guy to stick around when the sun’s up.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“Of course not.” She sets his coffee down in front of him and eats her own plate of food standing up, leaning against the counter across from him. “How’d you sleep?”

He takes a long pull of coffee — tastes fancy like Starbucks. At his own place he has a gallon tin of Maxwell House. “Just fine.”

“Would you like to come back tonight?”

“Thought that was a given.”

“Easier to have doubts in the light of day.”

“I can, if you’d like me to.”

“I would.”

“Okay, then. I will.”

 

* * *

 

He hears her get home from work around eleven, waits a half hour before knocking on her door. He’s already in his pajamas. She looks tired, doesn’t offer him a beer. A frozen meal has been left out on the coffee table, barely eaten. Chicken parmesan, maybe.

“I’ll meet you in there,” she says.

So he goes into her room and gets the bed ready like they did the night before — pillows on the floor, comforter pulled to the end of the bed.

When she climbs in with him, she smells like toothpaste. She flips off the light.

“I’m ready,” she says.

“Ready for what?”

“To find out what you do for a living. Or, I guess, what you say you do to make everybody believe you’re not a spy.”

“I’m a welder.”

“A welder.”

“I weld things.”

“I gathered that.”

“Then why do you sound surprised?”

“It just seems like a thing people don’t do anymore.”

“People will always need things attached to other things.”

“I guess that’s true. Do you want to hear what else I thought you did?”

“Sure.”

She ticks off items on her fingers. “Firework chemist. Contractor. Drug dealer. Something to do with NASA. Ex-professional athlete who now coaches youth sports in the community for free because it’s fulfilling and you don’t need any more money the rest of your life.”

“I’d hate to hear what I did to make you come up with all that.”

She stifles a yawn behind her hand. “Little things. The drug dealing was because I smelled weed once.”

“Guy’s not allowed to get high now and then?”

“Well, and it was the guys you had with you.”

“That’s Miller and his boyfriend Bryan. They’re buddies of mine. Doesn’t mean I’m a dealer. Where’d athlete come from?”

“Well, your —” She makes a gesture up and down his body. “Everything.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Pardon?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“I don’t know what you’re about to say.”

She shoves his shoulder. “You’ve got _a body,_ okay.”

“Everyone’s got a body.”

“You’ve got a good body. A — you’re very in-shape.”

“Are you trying to tell me I’m good-looking?”

“You know you’re good-looking.”

“I do not.”

“Well,” she says, more quietly, “you are.”

“Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself.”

“That’s just about the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

He's pretty sure that was sarcasm. “Oh, shut up.”

She yawns again, this time can’t hold it back. “My turn.”

“It looks like you’re about to pass out.”

“Better ask me something interesting then.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

She makes a noise like a game show buzzer. “Boring. Try again.”

He thinks. “What made you want to be a nurse?”

“Easy. Didn’t want to be a doctor. Next.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Sure it is.”

“Okay, but why didn’t you want to be a doctor? What kind of nurse even are you? What would you like to do if you weren’t a nurse? What —”

“Okay, okay, fine. My mom is a doctor. Like, big-wig, flying-all-over, saving-the-literal-world kinda doctor. She wanted me to do the same, but I just. I don’t know. It didn’t feel right. I was down with wanting to help people, but the thought of the schooling and the debt and the responsibility — too much red tape, you know?”

“Is she okay with it? That you’re not a doctor.”

“Not really. She values nurses, obviously, but in a ‘thing for other people’ kinda way. She doesn’t think I’m living up to my full potential.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I work hard every day and I’m satisfied with the work I do, so I’ve got no interest in fixing what isn’t broken. I make enough money, and I spend a lot of time with Madi, and — I mean, everything is perfect.”

“Except you’re lonely.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He looks over at her and she’s staring at the ceiling, hands clasped over her stomach.

“Not anymore,” she says.

 

* * *

 

The next night, before he can even knock on the door, he hears the loud squeal-scream of Madi. He lowers his hand and heads back to his apartment. An hour later, Clarke pounds on his door. When he opens it she looks concerned.

“You’re late,” she says.

“You have Madi.”

“So?”

“So...isn’t it, like, weird?”

“She’s five. Nothing is weird unless we tell her it’s weird.”

“She’s not going to be threatened by me or whatever?”

“You’re not doing anything threatening.”

“I’m sleeping with her mom.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He lets out a long breath. “Okay.”

He follows her out of his apartment and across the hall and into hers, which is significantly messier than it usually is. A half-open pizza box sits on the stovetop. A stack of coloring books teeter on the coffee table. Crayons and washable markers have fallen to the floor. Madi is half-asleep on the couch in a _Beauty and the Beast_ nightgown, watching Spongebob on TV.

“Madi,” Clarke says, sitting beside her and rubbing her ankle. “You remember Bellamy, right?”

She doesn’t look away from the TV. She nods once. Bellamy waits by the front door with his hands in his pockets.

“He’s come over for a sleepover tonight. How do you feel about that?”

Madi gives an exaggerated shrug.

“Are you sure? You can tell me if you don’t feel good about it.”

“I like Bellamy,” she says, so quiet Bellamy can hardly hear it.

Clarke looks at him. “See?” Then to Madi: “C’mon, it’s past your bedtime. Let’s go read a story.” She turns off the TV and Madi climbs off the couch and takes Bellamy’s hand and guides him down the hall to her room, which he’s never seen. In his apartment, his spare room is empty; it’s barely bigger than a closet. Madi has a small bed with a pink comforter, and in the corner a fan oscillates back and forth. Some toys are scattered around and the walls are covered in taped-up drawings. A little yellow lamp sits beside her bed. She dutifully picks a book from the library pile by her nightstand and hands it to him.

He looks to Clarke.

“Go ahead,” she says, standing in the doorway, smiling smugly.

Madi climbs into bed and pulls her covers up to her chin.

He sits at the edge of the mattress and opens the book — _The Giving Tree._ He hasn’t done this since Octavia was a baby. He clears his throat and begins: “'Once there was a tree…'”

 

* * *

 

“You’re good at that,” Clarke says, speaking even more quietly than normal, her words slow, tired. The door is still open as usual and Madi’s just across the hall. They’re lying on their sides, facing each other.

“At what?”

“Reading. She’ll never let it go now. She’s going to want you to read everything.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Good,” she mutters, distant. Her eyes shut. “It’s your turn.”

“I think you’re too tired.”

“Am not. Been looking forward to this all day.”

“That so?”

She nods, exactly like Madi did while she was watching TV. “There’s the question I should ask, and the question I want to ask, but I thought I’d be too chicken to ask that one.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll ask both, and you can answer what you want.” She goes quiet for long enough he thinks she’s fallen asleep, but then she says, “First, are you single, and second, if so, why? The first because, I thought, if you were in a relationship then we probably shouldn’t be doing this, and I started to feel bad about it.”

“And the second?”

She shrugs, also like Madi. “Seems wrong, a guy like you being single.”

“How so?”

“You know, being perfect and all.”

“I’m not perfect.”

“Perfect people always say that.”

Her eyes are closed so she misses his irritated expression. “Yes, I’m single, and it’s because — I don’t know. I don’t like dating apps. I don’t go out a lot. And for whatever reason it’s hard for me to feel connected to people.”

“Do you feel connected to me?” Her voice trails off like she’s already mostly asleep.

He waits long enough for her breath to dip into an even rhythm.

“I think I do,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Some nights they stay up until one or two in the morning talking, trading questions back and forth. He finds out Clarke is five years younger than him, had Madi when she was twenty-five. She left Lexa because of “ideological incompatibility” but he never asked what that meant. She wants full custody of Madi but knows she’ll never get it. She also wants to get married again someday, which she mentioned brusquely before immediately changing the subject.

He tells her about Octavia, how he misses her. He tells her about how he became a welder (luck, chance, guy named Kane offering him a job out of high school, becoming his apprentice). He tells her about all the things that happen in his day, the hours they’re apart, things he’s never bothered telling anyone else because they were too boring, not worth mentioning, but if he doesn’t go through his day from the moment they part to the moment they’re back in bed, she’ll ask about it. What about lunch? she’ll say. A protein bar, he’ll reply. What kind? Are they any good? Did you get them on sale? So he’s gotten in the habit of mentioning all the things he knows she’ll ask about, even if he thinks they’re petty useless details. But secretly it thrills him, the interest and delight she takes in the mundanity of his life.

Other nights, Clarke falls asleep the moment the light is out. On those nights, he stays awake, traces the line of her shoulder, the wide curve of her hip. Runs a gentle finger over the back of her hand. Times his breath with hers until he eventually falls asleep too.

 

* * *

 

On a Friday in late June he goes out to a bar with Miller after work. He drinks a few beers, watches the game. Miller tells him that he and Bryan aren’t really working out, and he thinks Bryan’s been cheating on him. Bellamy nods and listens, offers what little insight he can on relationships, but mostly stays quiet and lets Miller talk it out. A couple beers turns into nine or ten or eleven for Miller, until he’s nearly falling off his stool, and it’s nearing midnight, an hour later than Bellamy usually gets to Clarke’s apartment. She’s probably worried, he thinks, but in all this time, nearly a month now, he’s never thought to get her phone number, so he can’t tell her where he is.

He’s had a drink or two too many himself, and pays their tab and drags them both to Waffle House where he makes Miller eat a pecan waffle and drink some coffee, and now Miller looks raw and miserable, close to crying.

“I thought he was the one, man. I thought he was the one.”

“I know.” Bellamy dips a piece of waffle into his syrup. “You can’t really predict these things.”

Finally, around three in the morning, only vaguely tipsy but mostly dead on his feet, he gets back to his apartment and looks between his door and Clarke’s, and even though he knows he shouldn’t, he tries the knob on Clarke’s door. It opens. The stove light is on, and he goes to her bedroom where the door is open a crack and the covers are turned down and Clarke is facing away from him. He can tell she’s not asleep. She waited up for him. 

“You’re late,” she says.

“I was out with Miller. Lost track of time. I would have texted but I don’t have your number.”

She stays silent.

“Should I go back to my place?” he asks.

“No. I just missed you is all.”

“I’m here now.”

"Good."

He takes off his shoes and climbs into bed, jeans and all, and the next morning, he wakes up late, nearly noon, and Clarke is already gone for the day. He rolls over to check his phone, and on top of it rests a small piece of paper with her number on it.

 

* * *

 

There’s the night he thinks she wants him to hold her. She shifts back a little and it would be easy, so easy, to scoot forward just a few inches, wrap his arm around her, bury his nose in her hair. Kiss her shoulders, her back. Rub his hand down her hip and thigh. He tells himself it’s in his head.

There’s the night when he’s debating ordering a pizza for himself for dinner instead of cooking, but Madi knocks on his door and asks if he’d like to come over for dinner. Clarke made white bean chicken chili and they eat it on the couch in Disney-themed plastic bowls while watching _Moana._  

There’s the next night, when Madi invites him over again. And the next, when Madi isn’t there but Clarke invites him over, and they watch SVU while eating leftovers. Then there are all the subsequent nights where he starts coming over uninvited for dinner, and then insists on pitching in, on the food or clean-up or both, and Clarke starts texting him grocery lists, and he picks them up on the way home, and they cook dinner together while they talk about their days.

There’s the night Madi comes into the bedroom and tugs on Bellamy’s sleeve and whispers, “I had a nightmare,” and he looks back at Clarke who’s awake now too and who says, “Come here, baby, tell us what happened,” so Bellamy lifts Madi onto the bed, and she settles between them and tells them all about the nightmare, and falls asleep soon after.

There’s the night Clarke looks nervous, and he asks what’s wrong, and she says, “What are you doing tomorrow?” Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and he tells her he has no plans, so she asks if he wants to go to the zoo with her and Madi. So they go, and it’s the first time they’ve hung out during the day, and Madi takes Bellamy by the hand and drags him all through the zoo and shows him all the animals, and at the end of the day when she’s too tired to walk, he lifts her onto his shoulders as they watch fireworks bloom in the sky. 

That same night, after Madi is in bed and he and Clarke are in bed too, the neighbors still shooting off bottle rockets nearby, she says, “We should do that again sometime.”

“Go to the zoo?”

“No, hang out during the day.”

“The three of us?”

“Maybe. Or, you know, just the two of us.”

“You’re not sick of me yet?”

“I couldn’t get sick of you if I tried.”

 

* * *

 

He tells Octavia, eventually. They’re at brunch on a Sunday, and Clarke is at work. She’s begun texting him on her breaks just to give him updates on her day. There’s a new doctor at the hospital named Niylah whom she refers to as the Hot Doctor, and Wick the Asshole Orderly, and Raven the Nurse BFF, and Sinclair aka The Only Chill Person In The Whole Fucking Hospital. Bellamy knows all of them by name and nickname, all their important life details, and all the petty drama that unfolds in and around the hospital. Raven, for example, is dating a dude named Finn but has a thing for Wick, but Clarke thinks Raven is just looking for an excuse to leave Finn, whom she’s been with "for like, a billion years,” and grasping on to any dude who gives her the time of day “because she refuses to be alone. She just refuses. I don’t get it. Being single isn’t that bad.”

“Hello? Bell? Are you listening?” Octavia says.

Bellamy turns his phone upside down on the table. Octavia had been telling him something about her new boyfriend Lincoln, a subject that, just a few months ago, would have sent him reeling, an excuse for them to drift further apart, but now he’s just happy she’s found someone she seems to really like.

The server comes by with Octavia’s eggs benedict and Bellamy’s chicken and waffles, and Octavia says, “So who are you talking to?”

“Nobody,” he says, and scrapes butter onto his waffle.

“You only know, like, three people. Are you and Echo back together?”

“No.”

“Have you finally decided you’re secretly in love with Miller?”

“No.”

“Then it’s someone new.”

He pours syrup over his plate.

“It _is_ someone new,” she says.

“I guess.”

“Oh my god, tell me everything.”

“It’s not — it’s kinda weird.”

“Kinky weird? Poly weird? Or unrequited pining weird?”

“Weird weird. We don’t — we just sleep together.”

“Friends with benefits. Nothing wrong with that.”

“I mean literally sleep together. Share a bed. That’s it.”

“Oh.”

They’re silent for a moment, and Octavia asks, “But do you have feelings for her?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“What about her?”

“No idea.”

“Do you have any reason to believe she’s not into you?”

“She's my neighbor. Divorced, has a kid. Maybe there's too much going on, I don't know.”

“It sounds like she's into you, if she's inviting you into her bed.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

He takes a bite and thinks about it while he chews. “I don’t think so. I don’t know, I just don’t feel any pressure to push or hurry or anything. I’m too old for the chase, you know? If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, I can live with that, too.”

“That’s a good position to be in.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

 

* * *

 

On Monday he gets a text while he’s at work, not with a grocery list, but it says, _Can you call me?_ and he gets the feeling something is wrong so he takes a break and calls her.

“Hey,” she says when she picks up, and in that single word her voice wavers.

“What’s wrong?”

“Madi had an accident.”

“Is she okay? What happened?”

“It’s not — I’m making a big deal out of it. I know I am.”

“Just tell me.”

It sounds like she’s trying not to cry. “She jumped off a swing and broke her arm. Hit her head.”

“Is it bad?”

Clarke makes a _mhm_ noise followed by a little muffled gasp like her hand is over her mouth.

“I’ll be right there,” Bellamy says.

“Bell, no, you don’t have to.”

“It’s fine. You shouldn’t be alone.”

He gets to the children’s hospital and Clarke is in her scrubs with a hoodie over top of them. She’s sitting in the waiting area with her head in her hands. When she sees Bellamy, she stands and hugs him, and he holds her and she clutches at him.

When she pulls away there are tears in her eyes and she wipes them away as if embarrassed. “She’s getting a CAT scan.”

They sit down together in the vinyl mauve chairs.

“Can I get you anything?” Bellamy asks. “Coffee, something to eat?”

“No thanks,” she says. “Actually, can you —” She holds out her hand to him, fingers splayed. He takes it in his own and threads their fingers together, holds her hand tightly between both of his.

They find out shortly after that Madi will be fine — a few staples in her head, a cast on her arm for six to eight weeks. Since she’s so young, they’re having her stay the night for observation. When Clarke goes into her room to wish her goodnight, Bellamy goes with her, and Madi brightens at the sight of him, but then starts crying when she realizes she’s not coming home for him to read her a story.

“Tomorrow,” he tells her. “Anything you want.”

Her little head is wrapped in a big bandage that has some blood on it and the sight brings up something fierce and angry in him, even though it’s nobody’s fault.

“Tomorrow,” she says.

Bellamy drives Clarke home because she’s too shaken to drive herself. He picks up some fast food on the way. Clarke manages to eat a little of it. They watch an episode of _Friends_ and go to bed a couple hours early.

In the dark, facing away from him, Clarke says, “I’m a nurse. I’m normally fine with this kind of thing. I see it every day.”

“It’s different,” Bellamy says. “She’s your daughter.”

“I just thought — I don’t know, she was immune, maybe. All the things I see in ICU, they happen to other people. People like us. Not people like her. And I realized, she’s got a whole life of pain ahead of her. Little pain and big pain. Inconvenience and struggle. I gave her that. I gave her suffering.”

“You’ve also given her joy. Love. The good things in life.”

She curls in on herself and a soft sob escapes her, and another, until they grow faster like the patter of rain. Without thinking, he shifts closer and puts an arm over her. She turns over in his embrace and presses her face against his chest, and he holds her and rubs her back and doesn’t say a word, not that it’ll be okay and everything is fine, because it’s not, it’s more complicated than that, and he knows that sometimes you just need the silent presence of a warm body beside you.

 

* * *

 

Madi handles the whole thing like a champ. Bellamy takes the day off with Clarke and goes to the hospital, where they meet Lexa, a stern-looking woman in an expensive suit who flew all the way home from a business trip in Tokyo on a red-eye. She gives him an appraising look, then a _Him? Really?_ look to Clarke, who returns an annoyed glance, and it’s just about the most intricate telepathic conversation he’s ever been part of. Lexa doesn’t say a word to him, only speaks to Clarke, which is fine with him because she’s kind of terrifying, and after a tense discussion, Lexa agrees that Madi can be released to Clarke, but tomorrow they’ll have to bring her back over to Lexa’s, and in Bellamy’s opinion that’s a lot of moving around for an injured child, but at least it shows that Madi is loved widely and deeply. If he were a kid and this happened to him, no one would have even been there to take him to the hospital, let alone pick him up.

Bellamy drives separately so Clarke can bring her car back home, and on the drive, she texts him, _Will you pick up an order of crazy bread from little caesars? That’s all she wants._ Little Caesar’s is on the other side of town, but he takes a detour and picks up two Hot-’n-Readies and two orders of Crazy Bread and a lot of cheese because he knows Clarke nearly drinks the stuff, and when he gets back to Clarke’s apartment, the first _Harry Potter_ movie is on TV, which Clarke had told Madi she wasn’t old enough to watch yet, but he guesses today is a special occasion. They marathon Harry Potter all day, and by the third movie, Madi is curled up on Bellamy’s lap, and he’s stroking her hair away from her wound, and Clarke is napping on the loveseat.

 

* * *

 

A night in July, no fan speed in the world could cool down Clarke’s apartment. The window unit is set at sixty and it does nothing to abate the midnight heat. Clarke is on her side pretending to sleep. He knows she’s awake because when she falls asleep, she makes a soft clicking noise with her mouth like she’s sucking on something; at first it was weird but now he finds it endearing, and much better than snoring. He still wears a shirt and pants to bed for the sake of propriety, but at this point he wishes he could take off his own skin. He wants to hold her, but he thinks it would be perilous.

He looks at the clock — almost one a.m. He’s drowning in sweat.

“Clarke,” he says.

“Hm?”

“I need to go back to my apartment.”

“For what?”

“To sleep.” He hasn’t slept in his own bed in almost two months.

She rolls over and props herself on her elbow to look down at him. “It’s hotter there.”

“I can be naked there.”

“You can be naked here.”

He stares at her.

“I’m a nurse. Nudity doesn’t bother me.”

“So you’re okay with some random dude just being naked in your bed.”

“You’re not some random dude. You’re the dude I’ve been sleeping with every night for two months.”

“Still. It would be weird.”

“Why?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Say it.”

“It’s getting a little too close to sex, don’t you think?”

“You’re right. Your dong is a magnetic force. Unleash it and I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep my hands off you.”

“Clarke.”

She turns away and says, “Go ahead. I won’t look.”

He doesn’t move.

“What’s the problem now?” she asks.

“It’s also weird being the only one undressed.”

“Are you saying you want me to get naked with you?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That I don’t want to be the only one undressed.”

“Which means I have to be naked.”

“I guess.”

“So I’ll get undressed.”

“You will?”

“I bore a child, Bellamy. An entire room of people saw a slimy, bulbous head exploding out of my snatch. I really don’t care.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

She sighs and sits up. In one smooth movement she pulls off her tank top. Then she lays back and lifts her hips and shimmies out of her shorts and kicks them to the side. “Better?”

He’s staring at her. He knows he’s staring at her. She has round breasts and a round stomach and stretch marks and a dark blonde thatch of hair between her legs, and in the moonlight her skin is nearly as pale as the bedsheets. She looks like a Renaissance painting. He’s never been more attracted to anyone in his life.

“No one was looking at me like that when I was giving birth,” she says, hand behind her head, other arm draped over her stomach, casual-as-you-please.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and turns away to grip the back of his collar and pull his shirt off. He hikes the bedsheet up before kicking off his pants and boxers. He falls back against the bed; the air from the fan cools his damp skin. He takes a deep, relieved breath.

“Now can we sleep?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, and risks one more glance at her before she turns away from him.

 

* * *

 

The next night he looks at his phone and the temperature is a hundred and ten degrees. He’s sitting on the edge of Clarke’s bed in his boxers and he says, “We need to move out of this place.”

“We?” Clarke asks as she turns down the covers. “Presumptuous.”

“Practical.”

He’s been afraid to look at her all night. He can’t get the image of her naked body out of his head; he’s not used to wanting someone this much.

“I read somewhere that to fall asleep in the heat, you have to lower your core body temperature,” she says.

He feels a dip in the mattress behind him. “How do we do that?”

“We have a pool.”

“It’s closed.”

“But who’s here to stop us?”

“The locks?”

“I have a skeleton key for the apartment complex.”

He finally looks back at her. She’s dressed, thankfully, and smiling at him in a dark, mischievous way. “How’d you manage that?”

She lifts one shoulder in a little shrug. “Pike was swamped one day so I took over showing the empty apartments for prospective tenants. He never asked for the key back, so I just...kept it.”

“That’s so unethical.”

“I prefer to think of it as an opportunity.”

“I don’t know how I feel knowing you could break into my apartment.”

“And do what? Steal your pull-up bar? Your 1986 television? The three expired Bud Lights in your fridge?”

“Miller brought those over.”

She crawls across the bed and hooks her chin over his shoulder, whispers, “Let’s go for a bedtime swim.”

“I don’t own swim trunks.”

“So don’t wear any.”

 

* * *

 

At least there's a privacy fence. He’s never used the pool; the few months a year it’s clean enough to swim in, it’s usually too packed with people.

With no warning at all, Clarke pulls off her shirt and drops her shorts and he has only a second to admire her body again before she canonballs into the deep end. The water splashes him and he covers his face with his arm.

She bobs up and wipes her hair away from her face and says, “Come on. I won’t look.”

“Sure,” he replies, already pulling off his own shirt and shorts. He jumps in less conspicuously, lets the shock of chill wash over him. He almost forgot what being cold felt like.

Clarke floats on her back. He takes a breath and sinks underwater to keep from staring at her, settles near the bottom of the deep-end, cross-legged. When he opens his eyes, Clarke is swimming in circles around him. They come back up together, breathless. This close, he can see each bead of water drip down the sides of her face, eyelashes clumped into triangles.

“Better quit looking at me like that,” she says.

“Like what?”

“Like you want to kiss me.”

He splashes her lightly. “You wish, princess.”

She splashes him back. “Maybe I do.”

“Gotta ask nicer than that,” he says, though his heart is racing in his throat.

“I'm not going to ask for it. You’ll have to come to me.”

“Is this a game of chicken now?”

“Maybe.” She falls back and lets the water catch her, floats around him. “I like it this way.”

“What way?”

“Slow.”

She hovers near him. Before he can stop himself, he reaches out and runs a hand over her belly, pulls her into him. She wraps her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders and they swim around, tangled up in each other.

“With everyone else,” she says, her cold lips pressed against his neck, “it’s always a rush to the finish line. You think, if I don’t take this person right now, someone else will. Like people are used cars. You meet someone and you fuck them right away and then maybe you get to know them. I hate that.”

“How would you rather do it?”

“Like this.” She holds his face gently in her hands. “Are you seeing anyone right now?”

“If I were, you’d know.”

“Do you want to be seeing anyone?”

“Present company excluded?”

She gives him a small smile. “Present company excluded.”

“No.”

“Neither do I. So I see no reason we can’t just stay here for a bit, in this space of not-knowing, enjoying each moment as it comes to us.”

He runs his hands down her waist, over her hips, down her thighs. “There is one thing I’ve been wanting to say.”

“And what is that?”

“That you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She laughs and pushes him away, unwraps her legs and swims backward. “Are you just saying that?”

“I’ve got no reason to lie.”

For the first time since he’s known her, she blushes, the red of her cheeks a stark contrast to the crystal blue of the water, of her eyes. “No one’s looked at me like you do since before I had Madi.”

“They must be blind.”

“You’re not just trying to get me in bed with you?”

“Maybe I am.”

"Well then," she says, "let's go to bed."

 

* * *

 

When they get back to the apartment, they dry off with towels and don’t bother showering off the chlorine, just crawl into bed together naked and a little damp. Clarke will change the sheets tomorrow anyway. He’s finally cool enough that he can curl around her, the way that has come to feel right and good and necessary for his well-being, and everything feels peaceful and easy.

Then, just as he thinks he’s about to drift off, she asks, “How often do you masturbate?”

He’s suddenly very awake. “Kind of personal, don’t you think?”

“You’re naked in my bed. If now isn’t a good time to ask you about your masturbatory habits, when is?”

He lets out a long, aggrieved breath. “I don’t do it as often as you’d think.”

“I’d assume once or twice a day.”

“Try once or twice a month.”

She turns her head, eyes wide. “Really?”

“I don’t know. Just never really liked it.”

“Do you like having sex?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” she asks, either shocked or horrified, he can’t tell.

“The idea of hookups makes me sick. I’ve tried it a few times and I hate it.”

“So what kind of sex _do_ you like?”

“The kind where I love someone. Sex for the sake of it does nothing for me. I could go without my entire life if I had to.”

“When was the last time you had sex you enjoyed?”

“Six years ago. Almost seven now.”

“And that was with someone you loved.”

“My ex-girlfriend. Echo.”

“How have we been doing this over two months and I’m just now finding out the name of your ex-girlfriend?”

“Not much to say about it. We were together three years. We broke up because we weren’t right for each other.”

“But the sex was good.”

“The sex was great.”

Her voice sinks low, soft, a little nervous. “Tell me about it?”

He gives her a look, asking if she’s saying what he thinks she’s saying. “In detail?”

“Mhm.” She rolls over on her back.

He props his head on his hand so he can see her properly. “What do you want to know?”

She closes her eyes. “What was your favorite thing to do with her?”

“Go down on her.”

“Yeah? What’d you like about it?”

“I liked the way she tasted. Liked when she pulled my hair when she came. Liked making her drench the sheets. Mostly I liked giving her a second to breathe and then making her come again and again. Liked fucking her with my tongue until my jaw ached.”

Under the sheet, she spreads her legs, hooks one over his. “Then what?”

“I’ll tell you,” he says, swiping a few strands of hair from her forehead, “if you touch yourself.”

She slips a hand under the sheet, between her legs, rubs herself in slow circles. He drags his knuckles gently down her face, her neck.

“I’d get her on her knees,” he says softly, “sink into her. Fuck her until she came on my cock.”

Clarke brings her other hand under the sheet. “What else do you like?”

“I like it when you say my name.”

Her voice comes out low: “Bellamy.”

He trails his hand down to her breasts and runs the pad of his thumb lightly over a nipple. She gasps.

“When you get yourself off,” she asks, breathing heavy now, “do you think about me?”

“You’re all I think about.”

“God, Bellamy,” she says, voice trailing into a whine.

“I want to know what you taste like.”

She brings her hand up and presses two fingers gently on his bottom lip. He opens his mouth and sucks them in; a thread of heat pulses low between his legs. She pulls her fingers out and brings them back down, strokes herself in earnest.

“I think about fucking you every morning when I wake up. Coming inside you.” He pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pulls it a little; she groans. “I want you so much it’s a struggle to keep my mouth off you.”

“Then don’t,” she says, a ragged rasp.

He tugs the sheet away, watches her fuck herself with three fingers of one hand while she rubs her clit with the other. He climbs over her, his cock heavy and hard as he settles between her legs. He touches the fingers inside of her and she pulls them out; he replaces them with two of his own. They slide in and she lets out a broken moan. He moves them in and out in time with the circling of her clit, tilts them up and puts gentle pressure on the bundle he finds, back and forth.

He leans down and sucks a nipple into his mouth, between his teeth. Bites a little.

“Bellamy,” she says, panting.

“I want to watch you come. Want to feel it.”

Her breath turns rapid for a few moments before she takes a quick breath in and stills. Her walls shudder and pulse around his fingers a second before she throws her head back and cries out. She soaks his hand, the sheets. He fucks in and out of her with his fingers, fast, hard. She rides his hand, hasn’t climbed down from the first when the second one hits her, more forceful this time.

Only when her hips touch the bed again does he slip his fingers out, immediately bringing his hand to his own cock so he can slick it with her wetness.

“Your turn,” she says, leaning up on her elbows to watch.

He bites his lip, leans over her and strokes himself.

“Come on my tits,” she says, sitting up to give him a better angle, cupping her breasts in her hands and tugging her own nipples, pushing them together.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and after a few more strokes he’s coming, heavy streaks of white over her breasts. A droplet hits her chin. She swipes it off with a finger and sucks it into her mouth; another wave of pleasure crests over him and he groans out her name.

After they clean up and settle back into bed, she lays her head on his chest even though it’s too hot to be this close, but he doesn’t mind.

“You still haven’t kissed me,” she says.

“And I’m not going to.”

“Mean.”

“You said you wanted to go slow.”

“Not that slow.”

“Isn’t it enough to know I want to kiss you?”

“No. It literally isn’t.”

He laughs and says, “Here,” and kisses the top of her head.

“Fuck you.”

“We can do that too.”

 

* * *

 

They’re cleaning up dinner, just the two of them. Madi is with Lexa. Music is playing on the stereo, something Clarke picked out, some pop ballad everyone in the world has heard except for him. She washes a dish and hands it to him and he dries it and puts it away, like they do every night. Clarke is humming to the music with her sweet raspy hum.

After the last dish, she unplugs the drain in the sink and he puts the last plate in the cabinet. He holds out the towel to her and she takes it and dries her hands and then he tosses it over his shoulder and steps closer to her.

She smiles up at him like she knows what he’s thinking. “Is it time?”

“I was thinking so.”

“Here I was expecting you’d take me out somewhere nice. Do it all romantic under the moonlight.”

He takes a step away. “We can do that if you’d like to wait.”

“Don’t you dare,” she says, and steps closer to him again, wraps her arms around his waist.

He rests his hands on either side of her face, thumbs over her bottom lip, her mouth parting for him.

“Do I have to ask nicely?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “Just want to remember it is all.”

She reaches up on her toes, and he leans down. Their lips meet in the middle, soft press at first, a couple chaste kisses before she opens for him, and he threads his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck and she tugs him closer. A little pleased moan escapes her throat.

When she pulls away a flush has risen high on her cheeks, a sight he’s often deprived of given how often they speak in the dark. He runs the pads of his thumbs along her cheekbones, feels the heat under her skin.

“You know what I haven’t done in a long time,” she says.

“What?” he asks.

“Made out with someone without any intention of doing anything more.”

“Not sure I’ve ever done that.”

“Then I think I’d like to be your first.”

She takes him by the hand and pulls him to the couch, where he sits down and she climbs on his lap. She presses her mouth to his and they pick up where they left off, and he keeps his hands politely on her waist, but can’t help trailing his fingers over the strip of skin between her shirt and shorts, the warm softness there that soon prickles with goosebumps.

They kiss slow, lazy, breaking only to bite each other’s lips. She peppers his jaw with kisses and sucks his earlobe between her teeth. He runs his nails gently down her back, under her shirt, and feels her grow hot under his touch. He kisses down her neck and chest, until she reaches for the hem of her shirt and pulls it off, a simple black bra underneath. She reaches behind herself and undoes the clasp, lets it fall down her arms before tossing it aside. The pouch of her belly rolls over the waistband of her shorts. He's spent his entire adult life around steel, so he's grateful that everything about Clarke is soft.

“Thought we were only kissing,” he says, unable to take his eyes off her chest.

“I didn’t restrict it to mouths.”

He takes that as permission enough, and sucks a nipple into his mouth. She gasps, pulls his hair a little. He switches sides and her breath speeds up. She touches his chin and directs his mouth back to hers, and this time it’s urgent and rough. He thinks this would be the time where they take it a step further, shed their clothes, move to the bedroom, but with that being unavailable as an option, instead, of its own volition, they slow back down to sweetness again, his hand cupping the nape of her neck, her lips offering little kisses to the sides of his mouth. They continue for ages, speeding up and slowing down, harder and softer, breaking only to bite and suck and lick whatever spots of skin they can reach. Eventually it cools to a close. Clarke rests her forehead against his. Her lips are bright red, nearly purple, swollen; her nipples hard, small teeth marks around them. He left love bites on her throat like he hasn’t done since he was a teenager. And somehow, despite still being hard against the fly of his jeans, he’s completely satisfied.

“Time for bed?” she asks.

 

* * *

 

“Something is wrong." She kisses his chin, his neck. It's August now. They’re naked, her leg hiked over his hip, shifting against each other in a slow, sleepy way like embers dying rather than being stoked into a fire. They've been making out between short bouts of conversation. “Your mind isn’t here.”

He doesn’t know how she can tell where his mind is, but she’s right.

“I’ve got a job down in Rolla,” he says. “A two-week gig. Building a silo. But I don’t want to take it.”

Rolla is a three-hour drive, so it’s not like he can commute. Kane is willing to put him up in a motel.

“Okay,” Clarke says. “What’s the problem?”

He kisses her because he doesn’t want to answer. He’s half hard and she’s wet and grinding on him, and it’d be easy to slip inside of her but he doesn’t, appreciates the burn of tension as being one he’ll probably never feel again, knowing, knowing for absolute certain, Clarke is the only person he’ll ever want for the rest of his life.

It takes a handful of minutes to pull apart again, and she says, “Don’t think you can distract me, Bellamy Blake. Why don’t you want to take the job?”

“I don’t want to leave you."

“It’s just two weeks.”

“That’s a long time to be away.”

“Are you worried I’ll forget about you?”

He tucks his face under her chin, presses a small kiss to her throat, feels cocooned in her hair, a safe place. “Maybe.”

“You’re afraid I’ll move on? Get distracted?”

He nods.

She makes a _hmm_ noise and he can feel it reverberate in her throat, against his lips. “I was thinking about taking Murphy for a spin.”

He pulls away and frowns at her. She laughs, lifts his chin up. He can see the glint in her eyes by the light of the stove hood. “Oh, stop it. You've got to know by now. Know what this is. What we are.”

“Seems too good to be true sometimes.”

“It’s not, though. I’m a divorcee with a five-year-old. It’s not like I’ve got a line of people trying to get my attention.”

“Why would anyone want anything else?”

She kisses him, a quick peck on the lips that he tries to chase down, but she pulls away and says, “Tell me you’ll take the job.”

“Okay,” he says, and she leans in and kisses him properly.

 

* * *

 

The first day of work in Rolla is so long and arduous that he gets back to the motel room — wood paneled walls, a TV older than the one in his apartment, but at least the A/C can pull down the ceaseless August heat — and falls asleep right away. He wakes up the next morning to a text from Clarke, a picture of his half of the bed, empty. He laughs because of what a low blow it is, and retaliates with a picture of himself on the pillow, his eyes closed as if asleep, her view of him during the mornings she wakes up first.

They go back and forth the rest of the day without words, just pictures. He gets to see her scrubs (rainbow teddy bears) and he sends her his unlit welding torch. Her yawning at four p.m.; him running a hand through his sweaty post-work helmet hair at six p.m. Her enchilada dinner; his Big Mac. Then, a selfie of her and Madi, in Madi’s bed, reading a book together. Her cast is pink and has been signed by everyone in the world it seems like. The caption: _i mis yu bell amee_ followed by a few emojis, and he replies, _Did she type that?_

_All by herself_

_Tell her I miss her too_

Clarke doesn’t reply for a while and Bellamy assumes she finished the story and is probably getting into bed now. He starts to drift off, but then startles awake to the sound of his text alert and checks his phone and has to blink his eyes a few times because it is definitely a picture of Clarke’s tits. Her night shirt is pulled up over them, and her mouth is in the picture too, her lip bitten between her teeth.

Before he can reply he receives another, this time with a nipple between her fingers, pinching and pulling a little, and he stares for a few seconds before he has to look away and blush and re-adjust himself in his boxers.

 _You’re not going to make these two weeks easy are you?_ he asks.

_I can stop if you want_

_God no_

_Then it’s your turn_

_Are you asking for a dick pic_

_I am_

He’s never sent a dick pic in his life. He doesn’t understand the appeal at all, but she asked for it, so he pushes the waistband of his boxers down and strokes himself to hardness while looking at the pics Clarke sent him, imagining himself there with her, maybe tucking his hand into her shorts and making her come silently so as not to wake Madi.

He snaps a picture and sends it, idly jerks himself while waiting for her reply, and after a minute he gets a video, and it’s just a few seconds in which she dips her hand into her shorts, plays with herself, and brings her fingers back out glistening, and the camera shifts back to her face and she sucks her fingers into her mouth.

“Jesus,” he whispers to himself.

 _I want you to masturbate while thinking of me sucking you off,_ she says.

So he does, but cheats a little by playing the video on a loop, which might be the most erotic thing he’s ever seen, but what pushes him over is definitely the thought of her bright red mouth around his cock, and the fact she might actually like it, might enjoy pleasing him just as much as he enjoys pleasing her, and when he comes, he feels a hollow thrum of want course through him like a gong, a feeling that starts at the center of his chest and expands outward to his fingertips, a desire unlike anything he’s ever felt, and in the short aftermath he imagines moving in with her and proposing to her and marrying her and buying a house together and treating Madi happily as his own daughter. Want itself has always been foreign to him, his wants set aside for the sake of Octavia, to do whatever job needed done. Now, he is a being made entirely of want, and he thinks, for once, he can have it.

 

* * *

 

The next day is quieter, both of them busy, but at night, while he’s getting ready to go to bed, his phone rings and it’s Clarke and he picks it up and says hello.

“I missed your voice,” she says.

“I missed yours too.”

“Madi’s not here tonight.”

He tries not to let himself think of the implication of that.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“Home.”

“I mean, where at home.”

“In bed.”

“On my side or yours?”

“Kind of in the middle.”

“I knew it.”

She laughs. “What?”

“You spread out when I’m not there.”

“Feels like a luxury, having this whole thing to myself for once.”

“I could start sleeping at my apartment if you’d rather.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“If my company’s not appreciated —”

“Bellamy,” she says. “You know I always want you beside me.”

“I know.”

He asks about her day and she gives him a play-by-play. Madi gets her cast off next week. Raven broke up with Finn “for good this time” but Clarke doesn’t believe it. It was Sinclair’s birthday today and the cake was dry but the icing was good. She asks about his day, and he doesn’t have as much to say, considering he spaces out a lot and works mostly alone.

He climbs into bed and turns off the light, and when he closes his eyes and listens to Clarke breathe, everything mostly feels normal again, and he can pretend he’s in the right place with the right person, and not two hundred miles away in a shitty motel trying to fall asleep on a lumpy old mattress.

“Ask me a question,” Clarke says.

“What were you thinking about last night when you brought yourself off?”

She lets out a little breath of a laugh, the slightest moan. “I was thinking about you inside of me.”

“Let me listen this time. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He can hear the creak of the mattress, the slip of covers as she adjusts. “First I’d want to feel your tongue on me.”

And so she sets the scene for him, and he reaches into his boxers and strokes himself, and when he starts to hear the panting and moaning of her getting close, he takes over, and tells her he’d like to roll her on her stomach and slide into her, pull her hair, tell her how beautiful she is.

“You’re mine,” he says, his own hand moving faster. “You’re mine.”

Her breath stops and what follows is a cracked sound, a gasp, and “Bellamy, oh god. Fuck. Bellamy.”

He surprises himself by coming just moments after, and while normally he doesn't make a sound, he does for her, a low quiet groan, so she knows his name on her lips is what took him over the edge, and they breathe and breathe in silence. After a few minutes, Bellamy says, “I should let you get some sleep.”

“Stay on the line,” she says. “We'll fall asleep together."

 

* * *

 

Time passes at an unbearably slow pace. Every night they talk on the phone and listen to each other fall asleep. He wakes up in the morning to a dead phone that he has to charge in the truck on his way to the worksite. He texts her _Good morning_ with a little heart beside it and when she wakes up she tells him she misses him, the bed feels so lonely without him, Madi keeps a little chart counting down the days until he’s back.

He finishes the job a little early, packs up his stuff around eight in the evening rather than sleeping in the motel an extra night and driving back in the morning. Clarke calls him at eleven when he’s still an hour outside of town, and he doesn’t tell her he’s en route, lets her go on as usual about her day, and thankfully it was a big one because she’s still going when he pulls into the lot of their apartment complex. He’s just shutting off the ignition when she asks, “Can I touch myself yet?” and he likes that, likes when she asks permission from him.

“Not yet,” he says. “Tell me what you’d want me to do to you if I were there."

Then he puts his phone on mute and climbs out of his truck, doesn’t even bother grabbing his duffel, just goes inside and rushes up the stairs while Clarke spouts some truly filthy things. “I want you to fuck me so bad I can hardly stand it. I can’t believe we waited this long. I don't think I can wait until tomorrow.”

And that’s when he unmutes his phone and says, “You don’t have to.” Then he knocks on the door.

“Oh my god,” she says. “You’re not —”

He hears shuffling on the phone and rapid footsteps behind the door and she flings it open and the phone is still lifted to her ear. She stares at him, grinning, and lowers her phone just as he lowers his, and they hang up and she jumps into his arms and wraps her legs around his hips and kisses him.

“I missed you” — kiss — “so much” — kiss — “I’m so” — kiss — “glad you’re home.”

He carries her inside and kicks the door shut behind him and they make out all the way to the bedroom where he lowers her roughly to the bed, unable to let go of her for even the second it would take to get undressed. He misses Madi but he’s grateful she’s not here tonight because it’s going to get loud.

Clarke scrabbles at the back of his shirt and manages to take it off. He hikes her tank top up over her breasts and laves kisses downward, kneels on the carpet and pulls her shorts down with him, settles her legs onto his shoulders. He slots his mouth against her and eats her out properly, the way he’s been dreaming of doing for months. Her fingers thread into his hair and tug him closer, until his tongue is buried inside her. He sucks her clit between his teeth and she gasps. It doesn’t take long at all before she’s tensing and shuddering around him and crying out his name. He pulls off and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, climbs back over her and kisses her again, this time sloppily, lazily, and against her mouth he asks, “Are we still moving slow?”

“If you don’t fuck me right now I’m going to scream.”

He lets out a laugh and unbuckles his pants, undoes his fly with one hand, pulls himself out, already hard.

“No condom,” she tells him, and he remembers when she told him her tubes are tied, and they had a talk a while back about being clean. It felt like a casual conversation, not specifically referring to this moment, but now he sees that she's been planning this for a while.

He slides against her and slicks himself up and she’s panting underneath him, squirming and frustrated, until he finally pushes in and she sighs like everything is finally right. She makes hitched little sounds with every thrust, claws down his back, bites his shoulder. He never even took his shoes off. The ceiling fan blows cool air over them but he’s still overheated, and her skin is hot to the touch. She groans out his name, says something like, “Come inside me, want you to come inside me,” and even though he wants to last longer — could, if he focused — his body is begging for release and he knows they’ll be able to do this later in the night, tomorrow morning, too. When she gets home from work. After they put Madi to bed. They can do this the next day and the next, fall asleep in each other’s arms for the rest of their lives.

He buries himself deep and stills, pulses inside of her, kisses her lips lightly. Exhales. Kisses her nose, her cheek, her jaw, her neck. She takes his face in her hands and presses her lips against his, any easy kiss. She tastes like him.

They shower together and she makes a shampoo mohawk out of his hair. She doesn’t let him in the spray for long; it’s too cold, she says. They dry each other off and climb into bed and huddle under the covers and it’s well past their bedtime and he can hardly keep his eyes open.

“Your turn,” Clarke says.

“I’m too tired. I don’t have any answers,” he replies against the nape of her neck, rubbing his beard along her soft skin. It’s too hot to be lying like this, but the heat is worth it, worth holding her again after too long apart.

“It’s an easy one.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“You own, like, three things, and you never use your apartment anymore, so I was thinking — do you want to just move in?”

“What would you do if I said no?”

“You won’t say no, just like I knew you wouldn’t say no when I first invited you over.”

“Am I that easy to read?”

“No, I just knew. And Madi did too, I think.”

He pulls her closer, starts to drift off even as he speaks, doesn't know why they even need to discuss it. Of course he'll move in. “Knew what?”

“That you belong here," she says, "with us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on [tumblr](http://www.bettsfic.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/bettsfic).
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, please [reblog the photoset](https://bettsfic.tumblr.com/post/176204441447/talking-with-you-in-the-dark-across-the-hall).


End file.
